


Nightmare

by HeyGina



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Hugs, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Nightmares, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7238143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyGina/pseuds/HeyGina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The room is cold, but there’s no blood anymore. Only darkness and tangled sheets and fear. The same fear that creeps into him every night, before he opens his eyes and realizes that it was a nightmare.<br/>It was a nightmare, it was just a nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

##  **_I._ **

_There’s blood._

_There’s always blood._

_His blood. His blood when he fell. When they strapped him down to the metal table. When they tied him to a chair and asked him questions he wouldn’t answer. When he found some shredded glass in his cell and thought it could be his chance to escape for good. (It wasn’t). When they pulled the trigger._

_When_ he _pulled the trigger. One, two, ten, too many times. When his bullets went through their brains. When his knife sliced their throats. When his hands cracked their skulls open. His hands._

_His hands. Him._

_H-_

The room is cold.

The room is cold, but there’s no blood anymore. Only darkness and tangled sheets and fear. The same fear that creeps into him every night, before he opens his eyes and realizes it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare, it was just a nightmare.

(Whispering it over and over doesn’t seem to change a thing.)

He sits up, because the weight on his chest is getting unbearable and he can’t think of taking it for one more second, no matter how much he must deserve it. He wonders if this is what falling feels like –he _knows_. It does feel like this, he remembers. Everything is unsteady, out of control, air doesn’t seem to be getting into his lungs, and he is cold. He is so, _so_ cold.

He is falling, and his head is spinning.

His head must be spinning too much, because he doesn’t hear his name being called, softly at first, a little more urgent later, as he panics even more. He is unable to realize how he is not alone until he feels someone’s arms around him, out of nowhere. Out of the darkness that’s eating him. Someone’s arms, one over his shoulders, the other one across his back.

His body goes rigid.                                              

His entire body goes rigid, because this is not how touch is supposed to feel. Touch means pain. Touch means punishment, discipline, death. Touch means _bad soldier_.

Touch is not supposed to feel this warm.

He holds his breath, waiting for the catch. Waiting for the pain, the punishment, waiting for it to _hurt_ , because that’s what this is supposed to do, hurt.

Not make him want to crumble ~~he is already crumbling,~~ not make him want to let go, to give up and give in into it.

He does, anyway.

When he has no choice but to let go of the air he has been retaining, he also feels himself relaxing a little. Only a little, but enough for him to notice. And enough for Steve to notice as well. He feels him soften his grip, as if he was being given the choice to stay or to go, to escape, to say _no_.

And he gives in. He gives in and chooses to stay because he is too tired, dammit. He is too tired and cold and _sad_ and it’s so warm there, so warm. He cannot help it when his head sluggishly drops against Steve's shoulder, and neither can he help it when the smallest sound -a moan, almost- escapes his lips as he feels a hand rest on the back of his neck, fingers slowly twisting strands of damp hair. And _God,_ he craves this so much. There are barely any memories of something like this in his mind, of being touched in such a gentle and pleasing and _innocent_ way. But right now, he realizes how much he’s been craving it. 

His head lowers even more, as if he wanted to disappear, to hide there and never come out again - because this darkness is much more welcoming than the one he is used to living in. This darkness is quiet and warm and comforting, and he _needs_ it.

He doesn’t deserve it. Yet, he stays.

After a while, he tries taking a deep breath, because he feels even dizzier now, but to he is cut off by a whimper. A soft, broken whimper that ends up unleashing a whole storm.

Another one follows, and another one, and soon enough his breathing is coming out in sobs, low and heart-wrenching sobs that he isn’t strong enough to control anymore. He isn’t strong _at all_ anymore. He is weak and broken and beaten and _tired._ So goddamn tired.

Steve carefully pulls him closer, his fingers now drawing senseless shapes across his shoulder. He lets him, and silently thanks whatever god is listening.

Because maybe, just maybe, there is no catch here. Maybe, for some reason, the Universe has stopped fighting him; maybe the Universe is giving him a break. Maybe, just maybe, he is allowed to have this.

(He wonders if this is what falling and being caught feels like.

He wouldn’t know.)

* * *

 

##  **_II._ **

_One night, it isn’t the blood._

_It’s the faces._

_One by one, they appear right in front of his eyes. A young man. A woman in a suit. A teenager, someone’s daughter. A little boy (_ God _, that little boy that screamed for his parents but didn’t know they were laying on their beds next door, in a pool of blood, eyes never going to open again), another woman, an old man, an engineer. Too many._

 _There’s too many, and they are all there. Pale skin, bloodshot eyes. They stare at him and he_ knows _, he knows it was his fault, he knows he pulled the trigger and held the knife and used his fist and he wants to say so, he wants them to know that he is sorry he is so sorry so so-_

“—sorry I’m so sorry I’m so-“

“Bucky.”

The room is so dark he can still see them when his eyes open. He almost jumps up, gasping for air because he feels like he hasn’t breathed in years.

“They saw me”, he whispers between shaky breaths, more to himself than anything, because he is only half aware of Steve's presence.

“It was a dream. It wasn’t real _”._

“But- yes. They were here and they knew- they knew it was me and- and-”

 _“Bucky_. No _.”_

 _“_ I did it. _”_

His eyes widen in realization. 

He knows.

He did it, he did it and he deserves to die for it, he deserves hell and worse. This is the first time he’s actually given some thought to it, because he's been too busy drowning in bloody nightmares and _dammit_ , it hurts like hell. How could he forget? How could he forget about the monster he wasn't able to fight, the monster he became?

 _“_ I did it _”,_ he says again, voice hoarse and low. He's afraid he'll break down if he speaks louder, and he can’t afford that, he can’t afford that luxury.

“It wasn’t you.”

The sound of his own heartbeat is almost everything he can hear, too loud, too fast, but he catches that. And for a moment, all he can do is stare at Steve, frozen, because _how can he not see it?_ It was him, his hands and his guns and his _eyes_ witnessing everything, looking at every face, his ears listening to every scream, every cry, _him._

“ _It wasn’t you_ ”.

It was - but _God_ , he wants to believe it so bad, so fucking bad. He _needs_ to, because if not, if he's right, he doesn’t know how he’ll live anymore. He doesn’t know how he’ll live with himself, because he is a monster and monsters aren’t supposed to live.

And hell, he is breaking down. He is breaking down under the weight of everything, of the blood and the screams and the cold and the _pain._ He's felt a lot of pain in his life - but this is a different one. It’s deeper and it's crushing him, it’s taking the air from his lungs and the _life_  from his body. He feels the pain of all the lives he took.

The lives he took.

And the life they took from him. His life. The life he should have lost seventy years ago, laying in that white, cold bed, having fought for his country like a good soldier, but was taken by someone else and tore apart until it wasn’t _living_ anymore. Until it was hell.

It’s like an epiphany. And it destroys him.

He died.

This time, he only needs to see Steve open his arms slightly, inviting, and he is into them, trying to make himself as small as possible, trying to disappear from the world. _He died._

“It wasn’t you _”,_ Steve repeats, over and over again, and he needs to hear it every single time, still barely able to believe it.

He crawls into this new warmth he has discovered in touch, and for once, he lets go and cries. He cries for them, but also for himself. He grieves - because he died. He lost his life and now he is back, but that life isn’t. And where that life used to be, where that _man_ that fell off a train was, they put a monster.

Now that that monster is gone, all that’s left is a broken man with too many memories, too many faces haunting him.

He cries for himself, for the life he lost, for what they did with it. With him.

It wasn’t him.

_It wasn’t him._

* * *

##  _**III.** _

An important matter in his recovery is finding his voice back.

One night, his voice finds him.

It finds him letting go of the train, falling, feeling that excruciating pain where his left arm was supposed to be. It finds him laying on a metal table, a man in white holding some kind of saw too close to his body. It finds him being beaten, being shocked, being left alone in a tiny room until all he can do is scream to know he is real.

It finds him with a rubber mouthpiece between his teeth, after he almost choked on his own blood last time. It finds him with some kind of device around his head and drowning in terror because he knows what’s next, he knows he _knows_ he kn-

His voice finds him and he wakes up screaming.

Because now that he is settled and calm and doesn’t have to worry about someone being after him or about starving or being too cold, everything is coming back. Not what he did; that never left him. What _they_ did to him is coming back. Slowly - in pieces, in nightmares. It’s coming back, and it feels like he is back in hell.

Every night feels like hell.

Sometimes, he wakes up but remains paralyzed, frozen. He spent too much time being frozen, he recalls now. He doesn’t know how many years in all they kept him awake.  It’s too confusing, but if he had to guess, he wouldn’t say many. (He vaguely remembers attacking his handlers after a short amount of time out of cryo. Maybe that’s why they put him back under so often).

Other nights, he wakes up cold, which is close to waking up paralyzed but hurts a lot more. Because cold is like a million tiny swords stabbing him everywhere; cold creeps inside him and stays there, cold takes him back to falling. Cold is ruthless, merciless. Cold leaves him shaking under the blankets for hours because he isn't brave enough to go to Steve and seek that newfound warmth.

He also wakes up feeling like a ghost hand has escaped from his memories and is choking him. He feels the fingers around his throat, the dirty fingernails digging into his flesh; almost hears the Russian curses.

This is the first time he wakes up screaming.

Tonight, however, he _does_ hear Steve calling him. He can’t see a thing; he has to close his eyes as soon as he tries opening them. Everything is too bright. But someone is speaking.

It takes him a few seconds to understand it’s not English he is hearing.

_(No)._

He realizes he feels cold, and paralyzed, and wet, but this time, all at once.

_(Please, no.)_

And it’s not Steve's voice. It’s not Steve speaking.

_Steve is not there._

He plays around with that thought for a moment, because it seems impossible. Steve  _has_ to be there. He has spent the past couple of weeks (weeks? months?) trying to convince himself that he is safe, he is with Steve, he is free. He is _free_ , he’s been to hell and back but he survived and now he has finally been _living_ for the first time in a lifetime. He has his own bed, he eats at least twice a day (when he is able to hold it down), he gets to be held when he has nightmares that leave him scared of his own shadow and make his heart race like only the chair did.

 _Nightmares_. A nightmare, it has to be a nightmare. It’s a nightmare. He’s been through this before. It’s only a nightmare.

But hasn’t it always been a nightmare?

Hasn’t all that time (people say it was seventy years, but he wouldn’t know, not for sure), felt like a nightmare, like hell, like something too terrible and inhuman to be really happening?

Has he just been allowed to _dream_ for a while?

( _No_ this is a nightmare, _this is a fucking nightmare_ and he needs to wake up he needs to—)

He opens his eyes.

And yes, it is a nightmare. It’s the same nightmare he’s been living in since he fell, an eternity ago. It’s the nightmare he never left.

Steve is not there.

They are.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yes. This was supposed to be a happy recovery fic where Bucky got hugs and love and regained his identity. Then I thought to myself "how could this be terrible?".
> 
> [come say hi on tumblr!](http://cvptainbucky.tumblr.com/post/166204762669/nightmare)


End file.
